Migrants are among the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world, and a church committed to defending strong families must be particularly engaged in assisting migrant couples and their children, a U.S. bishop told a Vatican conference.

"Across the globe, 175 million migrants seek safety and sustenance in an unknown land," Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City told the Vatican-sponsored World Congress for the Pastoral Care of Migrants.

For the first time, federal funding will help pay for unaccompanied minor immigrants to get legal assistance, including through Catholic agencies that will receive a little more than half of $4.2 million in grants for this fiscal year.

An additional $4.8 million will be allocated for the legal program for the 2015 fiscal year.

A human rights center in Tucson, Ariz., has released a poster with the hope that it will bring a human face to those who cross the border between the United States and Mexico.

The poster, titled "The Things They Carried: A Memorial to Lives Lost on the Border" and sold by the Colibri Center for Human Rights, features more than 100 of the most common -- and some not-so-common -- items found on or near the bodies of men, women and children who died when they attempted a border crossing near Arizona from 2000 to 2009.

Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley challenged all in attendance at the Knights of Columbus convention to be transforming agents in the world and to "connect the dots" between Christ and the suffering.

He was one of several bishops at the 132nd Supreme Convention in Orlando who spoke about the need for greater compassion for a flood of child immigrants to the U.S. who have arrived without a parent in recent months.